


I'll be your gold

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock - Fandom, Sherlock BBC
Genre: (and seen through the eyes of another child), (but not really), (but so fare Post-Reichenbach, (it's 'seen' through a sufferers eyes), (so... not really...), (though that's minor), Alzheimer's Disease, Angst, I am the Queen of Angst, I really shouldn't tag it that), M/M, Minor porn, OH YES ALL THE ANGST!, Oh, Oh yes, POV John Watson, POV Second Person, Post-Reichanbach, TW: Blood, but again, canon character death, minor description of abuse, minor description of pain, minor description of suicide, really doesn't warrant a proper tag, tw: child abuse, ummm - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 10:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t know who you are. It’s all a bit confused. Things are jumbled around up there. </p><p>-</p><p>John has a 'disease' that wastes his memory and leaves him confused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll be your gold

**Author's Note:**

> Um, there is here a minor description of violence towards children 'seen' through a child, blood, description of intense pain, emotional pain, so please steer clear if that doesn't sound particularly appealling. 
> 
> It is also written by me, so it's incredibly weirdly written and not very good. 
> 
> yay!

You don’t know who you are. It’s all a bit confused. Things are jumbled around up there.

One moment, the sun beats down on rock shattered over and over till it’s finer than dust, but rubs in the eyes and gets down the back of camoflauge that doesn’t camoflauge and weighs about as much as that chain-link armour you saw as a child, but you‘re not a child- you’re only 24 and seen enough of the world to know you don’t want it, you just want to live.

The next the grass is long and soft, the interior designer’s perfect carpet, and the tips brush at your little 7 year-old ankles as you run, hand held high with a paper aeroplane coasting through the clearest air your little lungs have ever breathed, and your mum is actually smiling and your dad isn’t yelling and Harry’s giggling and you’re all just glad to be out of the council flat.

But suddenly you’re squatting next to a woman in the sort of coat Clara wore before she walked out on Harry, and you’re dressed in plasticky blue and opposite you is the man who knows it all and looks like how a pre-Raphealite dreamed of angels and all you know is that you’ve never seen death like this.

You potter round the little flat with its brown arched wallpaper and slip into an armchair and try to remember why the flat feels like it’s missing its control centre, its nucleus, its raison d’etre whenever you here little Lucy Marigold practising her Rachmanaov for her grade 8 violin.

Then the wind bites your lungs like nipping dragons and your legs have never felt smaller as you’re dragged along by chain-link and a genius with unfairly long legs and who’s the only person who never felt a shoulder in the groin when they dared to hold anything approaching a weapon near your head, throat or heart, but right now that doesn’t matter because he’s fast and agile where you are not - a sleek panther next to your roaring lion.

And then your hands have never felt so useless before as you press against a brother’s neck and desperately try to hold his blood in, patch the skin together with clumsy needles that slip and slide and you just want the red to stop leaking all over your hands, but you can’t look up from them because if you do then all you’ll see is the terrified whites of his eyes as they darken towards a fate your sterile thread can’t stop.

But then it’s your first taste of real, proper fear - not the fear of Big Johny, but copper fear as you press yourself into two little lines between the peeling white bannisters and hear the bellow of intoxicated anger and the shrill roar of terrified, tearful defiance and the soft flutter of breath as the wife and mother stands torn and your whole body flinches when the whole house, the whole world, reverberates with the slap of gnarled flesh against soft, baby cheek.

And then its exhilarating anger, an anger you once felt directed against the murderer of brothers, fathers, sons but now directed at the curly haired fallen angel and his soft bow smile and his mind that worked too fast and his fingers, that tremored slightly when he deduced and then flipped whatever it was he was explaining all about and lips that no longer should be kissed

You lift your eyes from the fall and struggle through water-logged air till you meet a crowd of disciples who watched the angel fall and you just want to see him spring to his feet, and explain how he didn’t because it can’t be his blood creating prison bars down his face, it can’t be and you touch a wrist that you can’t decide is too warm or too cold, too alive or too dead before you’re gripped away.

Then you’re laughing at the pretty girl across the table who you met at med school and you’re pushing down the worries about finances, and about Harry’s drinking and about whether mum will make it to next year, because she’s pretty and you might get a fuck because it’s your birthday and you’re too young to not know what to do and not feel excited by that.

Then your hands are being held high above your head as he breathes at you and kisses the very side of your mouth, then your chin, then your neck, then your collar and recites the bones that stir memories from impassioned youth and skeleton mugs, but you’re not really thinking about that because your cock’s leaking and you just want him to get on with it and put his pretty angel mouth around you before you do something you regret, like tell him you love him.

Then there’s a feeling like there should be rain and permanent black clouds and the sun should be dimmed to the glow of a phone because there’s that wrong feel again, there’s the loss of importance, the loss of the selfish brain - shock - a medical emergency after a serious loss of blood, whereupon the brain begins to shut down blood supply to anything other than itself, but it doesn’t realise it’s selfish because it tries to protect the ones most important to it, but it doesn’t understand that when it gets to the diaphragm it has to keep that going too, because that keeps the lungs going and without the lungs the heart pumps blood without oxygen, without life and, and

And then he’s laughing, breathless against a wall with you and you’ve never felt this exhilarated - you thought you were meek, week, out of service but you were wrong and you laugh, but that night deep in your toes, gut, heart, you have the feeling that he’s in your life now and there’s nothing you can do to get him out.

And then you’re cocky and laughing and snarking back at your snipers, because if you don’t then you realise that you don’t know what your doing and that is more frightening than your supposed enemy, and then you’re on your feet and - pain, no words, no metaphors to describe this pain - no glass shards splintering into shatters, no blooming barbed-wire roses, no thick crawling, searing lightening strikes just pain, pain, pain

But now you remember why there’s another sort of pain in your heart. Because Sherlock’s gone. Really, properly gone this time. Not just a fallen angel that jumped, because you were right - he did survive. But Mycroft came back round, he’s old now and the already sparse hair has disintegrated into thin wisps, but he pressed the manila folder into your hands, 2 days, 2 week - the disease won’t let you remember. But inside details the death of your beautiful, angel detective as he spent his last days slowly ruining the whole of Moriarty’s web. But someone got to him, a Mafia hitman, and your beautiful, beautiful Sherlock died in the grime of a back alley not awarded a name.

And then you forget.

And you’re a child again, grasses tickling your legs.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh the angst...
> 
> So title from Mumford & Sons "Lover of the Light" (because how do you title?)
> 
> Thank you for reading! (Kudos, comments and bookmarks are hung up and worshipped)


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